Black Chalk (33 page)

*   *   *

LVI(iv)
   The next day, after another sleepless night, Jolyon had to carry out his first consequence. It was the last remnant of Jack in the Game and so it bore Jack’s fingerprints, the schoolboy smut, the seedy performance.

Jolyon had spent the morning being shadowed by Mark who, despite his late-night escalation, looked well rested. When later he met Chad, Dee and Shortest in the bar, Jolyon’s few hours of law lectures spent alongside Mark felt like relief, the three lightest hours this day had to offer.

Chad handed the magazine to Jolyon. Chad had come prepared.

Good old Chad.

There were certain practicalities regarding this consequence. Dee and Chad had agreed that Jolyon couldn’t be expected to perform, so to speak, under pressure. And who knew how long it would take. So no, he need not actually
do it
, he need only pretend. The magazine was both prop and shield, it was enormously sensitive of them.

They chose the toilets nearest to the bar. Shortest took the first stall and locked the door. Chad took the second stall and locked it. Jolyon took the furthest stall and left the door unlocked.

They did not have to wait long. There were three visitors to the urinals before the arrival of someone who needed to use one of the stalls. It was a first year called Colin, studying medicine. He was whistling the Beatles. Dee had wanted every last scrap of detail, but Chad wasn’t sure which song. ‘Was it
Come Together
?’ she would later joke.

Chad had a small mirror. By holding it in the space beneath the wall that separated the stalls, he could ensure that Jolyon acted the role properly. He had forewarned Jolyon about this, the information delivered in a thoroughly businesslike fashion.

When the stall door opened, Jolyon was sitting there with jeans gathered around his ankles and his underpants stretched beneath his parted knees. The magazine was resting in his bare lap covering his flaccid state, his penis shrunken and ashamed. They had chosen a magazine called
Asian Babes
and behind its cover, Jolyon was pumping his arm. He pumped and he pumped and he pumped. He didn’t look up. But he did hear that Colin had stopped whistling.

Chad, having ascertained that Jolyon had acted the role sufficiently, tilted his mirror and saw on Colin’s face the appropriate shock and disgust. And then Colin recoiled, throwing up his hand to shield him from what he had already seen. ‘Fucking hell, Jolyon,’ he cried out, ‘lock the fucking door next time, for fuck’s sake, man.’

*   *   *

LVI(v)
   The news spread quickly around Pitt.

Over the next few days, Jolyon was shouted at outside lecture halls, jeered from the bar, spat on several times, called a racist many hundreds of times, a pig, fascist, wanker, porn junkie, misogynist, porno pimp, ‘Tug’, sex fiend, Nazi, paedophile and, by Nadia Joshi, chairperson of the Asian Students’ Association, a crypto-Klan Paki basher.

Mark suspended his tailing of Jolyon for a short time, not wanting to be associated with such a vilified character, the taint of ‘racist’ perhaps the very worst to be marked with at Pitt. He walked into Jolyon’s room to tell him as much and also to express his admiration for Chad and Dee. He suggested it would soon be necessary for him to step up his own game, although he also continued to employ his sleep-deprivation tactics. Jolyon, wide awake at two o’clock one night, had discovered that the window tapping was achieved by use of a drawing pin pushed into the end of a bamboo cane.

As his notoriety swelled, Jolyon spent more and more time alone in his room, waiting for the
tap tap tap
and the music like a splintering earth. He lay on his bed feeling the weight of Pitt’s hatred for him being piled on his chest like vast slabs.

Jolyon had never taken any pleasure from that fact that he was universally adored at Pitt. He had felt only the vague impression that, yes, he was mostly liked and being liked was probably better than not being liked. But the sense of being hated was a sickness infecting every cell of his body. Love was something that had vanished without leaving its mark on Jolyon. But being hated was a feeling he would never shake. A feeling that gathered and calcified. And formed its thick mass at his heart.

*   *   *

LVII
   Dee is curled up on my sofa, no more tears for now.

I am opening cupboards I have opened two or three times already. The cupboards are empty, their contents strewn across the floor.

It’s not here, Jolyon, it’s not
here
.

It has to be, I say, picking up a rug, throwing it into a corner.

It’s not here.
It’s not here!

Dee, you’ve been coming to my apartment, do you remember –

Don’t you dare!
Don’t even dare try to blame me, Jolyon.

No no no, Dee, no blame. Your memory’s so much better, maybe I left it in the same spot every day. My hands fly all around me, pointing and waving, finally gripping the back of my skull.

You’ve lost it, Dee shouts, quickly sitting up, her sandals loud on my floorboards. The only thing I cared about, Jolyon.
Gone
.

Was it in here? That’s all I need to know, I say, moving in circles now, trampling photographs, memories. Maybe I took it with me when I went out walking, I say.

What do you mean
took it with you
? Dee cries. You mean it could be
anywhere in New York
?

No, I don’t know. I’m not saying I took it. I don’t know. I don’t … My nose is throbbing, the floor is a mess, my life scattered, misplaced. I fall back against the wall and slip down to the floor holding my hands to my face.

And then I hear Dee standing above me, her voice raining down on my shame. Unless you find my poems, Jolyon, you will never, ever see me again.
Never
. If I see you in the park by the Christmas tree at six one night then I’ll know you’ve found them. Otherwise, don’t bother, you won’t see me. How could I forgive you, Jolyon? Why did I ever forgive you?

I look up at Dee expecting to see anger on her face, thinking that I must meet her gaze. I deserve her rage, my punishment. But she doesn’t look angry, she looks immensely sad, Dee looks as if I have broken her.

She turns her head away from me and crosses her arms as if to ward off a chill. Her feet begin to pick out a path among the mess of my ransacked apartment, the shapeliness of her calves receding as I close my eyes.

And then I hear the door slam. I feel its shiver in the wall. My nose is definitely broken.

*   *   *

LVIII(i)
   Jolyon was caught in a pincer movement, the Game on one side and Mark on the other. But Hilary term was ending and Mark, at least, was returning home. He came to see Jolyon to deliver a parting line. ‘Make sure to get some sleep then, Jolyon. Phase four begins next term.’

But still Jolyon couldn’t sleep. He was staying on at Pitt, the Game would continue to be played throughout the six-week break. A vote had been taken on the matter, two votes in favour … Jolyon hadn’t even bothered to acknowledge the procedure.

And so they played on. Chad and Dee continued to conspire and Jolyon continued to lose. But with most of the student population absent for six weeks, his opponents had to find their humiliations for Jolyon in the broader life of the city. At working-class pubs, cheap eateries, supermarkets … anywhere students were despised in the city. Day after day it was a mixture of the banal and excruciating. Public nudity, a one-man demonstration against immigration, street performance – unicycle, mime, Shakespeare – and a consequence to which they gave the name ‘Nuptials Interruptus’. Jolyon had to sit in on the wedding of two strangers and rise to proclaim just cause as to why the bride and groom should not be joined in holy matrimony. He was in love with the bride, he said, they were engaged in a torrid affair. He was chased from the church, threats being yelled as he fled. There was exhibitionism, heckling, rap, pretension, cross-dressing, auditioning, money-burning, experimental dance, snobbery, solicitation …

He lay in bed at night reliving the looks in strangers’ eyes. He could recall their faces with greater clarity than their words, their abuse. And so for the first time in Jolyon’s life, strangers were becoming something to fear, his days beginning to warp and crack, being shaped by the opinions of people he knew nothing about.

*   *   *

LVIII(ii)
   A week before Trinity term was due to begin, Jolyon made an appointment to see the college doctor, an affable gentleman wearing a regimental tie.

The doctor weighed up the creature before him and started to jot merrily on his prescription pad. Yes, it was very brave of Jolyon to come. And one could actually do things about insomnia and depression these days, old chap, medicine had made remarkable leaps and bounds. The doctor handed Jolyon a prescription for three types of pharmaceutical. No need to fret any longer. Jolyon should be sure to return if he required anything more. Anything at all, old chap. He made Jolyon promise. And Jolyon promised he would.

*   *   *

LVIII(iii)
   He pulled his scarf up to his nose as he left Pitt. It was a college scarf, the one they had bought for Chad to wear in the early days of the Game. But there would be more to Jolyon’s day than the simple wearing of a scarf.

He took a bus and met the others outside. Tallest was there, several feet away from Chad and Dee, who handed Jolyon his ticket. Jolyon’s seat was two rows in front of the others, they didn’t want to be associated with him once everything began.

In they went and Jolyon took his seat wearing the red-and-white scarf, which stuck out sharply surrounded by so much yellow and blue. Yellow-blue scarves, yellow-blue shirts, yellow-blue banners.

When the football match started, so did the singing and screaming.
United, United, United. Fucking blind. Fucking cheat. Fucking nail ’im.

They had given Jolyon ten minutes to stand up and chant his first song, a familiar football tune but with a new set of lyrics. The opposition goalkeeper, Philippe Gherab, had been purchased from Le Havre. Chad and Dee had done their research.

Seven minutes into the match, when Gherab miskicked a back pass so that it hooked out of touch and the home crowd jeered, Jolyon got to his feet and started to sing, ‘
Vous êtes merde et vous savez que vous êtes, vous êtes merde et vous savez que vous êtes…’

The crowd around him fell into a bristling silence. And then a voice shouted, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ and then hundreds of voices were chanting, ‘Who are ya? Who are ya? Who are ya?’

Jolyon, the nausea sloshing in his stomach, began to protest. ‘Because he’s French, their keeper is French. It’s
you’re shit and you know you are
. But in French.’

Some voices were abusing him, other voices were shouting, ‘Sit down, sit the fuck down.’ And then everyone was shouting it, ‘
Siddown, siddown, siddown!
’

He sat down. The eyes, the eyes. Jolyon stared out at the game as if he couldn’t sense the feeling of the crowd, the weight of their hatred.

He had until the twenty-minute mark to complete his next challenge, which was based around the fact that the United captain had the same name as a romantic poet.

And so in the nineteenth minute, Jolyon rose again. He felt faint as if he were caught in a cloud of gas. And then he began his second song, the tune taken from Beethoven’s
Ode to Joy
, his voice quavering over the rippling of the crowd. ‘
We’ve got John Keats / And the best seats / He plays football potently / Like the ode / Composed to a bird / Keats is striking poetry.
’

A stunned silence was followed by a torrent of vicious abuse. The crowd’s agitation was rising, their blood pulsing. ‘Look, he has the same name as a romantic poet,’ Jolyon pleaded. ‘And the ode to the bird is
Ode to a Nightingale
. And there’s a double meaning to striking poetry…’

And that’s when it happened, the opposition scored, the United fans threw their hands catastrophically to their heads. Part three now had to be performed. ‘
Goal!
’ Jolyon cheered. ‘
Goooooal!
’

Something struck him from behind, Jolyon felt an explosion of sparks behind his eyes. And next the sound of shattering as the bottle broke against the back of his head. He stumbled down onto one knee, palms hitting the backs of the men in front who were pushed forward with a jolt. Recovering, they turned and stood and one of them threw a punch. Jolyon felt the blow at the side of his head, the heat in his ear. And then there were more blows from behind. Fists and feet. Jolyon pulled himself into a ball on the ground, tried to protect his head with his hands. And now someone was stamping, a boot crushing his fingers, then more boots stamping his ankles, his knees.

Just as he thought he would pass out, the rain of blows began to slow and Jolyon was pulled to his feet. More punches were thrown but the worst was over. Someone was shouting at his assailants, ‘Enough. Stop. That’s enough now.’

It was Tallest dragging him to the aisle. And then Chad was there, Jolyon’s arms across two sets of shoulders. Up into darkness, down steps and cold corridors, out into the broken-glass light. They lowered him onto a bench.

Chad looked like he was about to be sick. ‘Jolyon, oh God, I’m … It wasn’t supposed to go like that.’

Jolyon felt his teeth grinding something hard and gritty like a small rock in his mouth. And then, prodding it with his tongue, Jolyon realised the small rock was a tooth. He spat it out into his hand along with his blood and phlegm. He stared at the tooth for some time, prodded it, turned the tooth over and over in his palm.

The others were making sounds, asking questions, but he didn’t hear them.

‘I know what this is,’ thought Jolyon, ‘the moment of
tooth
!’ And he started to laugh. He cleaned the tooth against his thigh and dropped it in his pocket. And then he looked up at them, three horrified faces, and started to laugh even harder. ‘Now you get it, right?’ said Jolyon, noticing that he could see through only one eye. ‘There’s no way you can beat me,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’ The blood was bubbling from his nose as he snorted with laughter. ‘Nothing at all.’